You may find this hard to believe, but just a week or so ago, a friend and I were having an email conversation about the cancelling of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber named for the pilot’s mother, that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, by the Department of Defense. We couldn’t help but laugh at the idiots—maybe some of the Musk Army of Stupid Young Tech Bros—who decided that the word “Gay” doomed the plane to oblivion. Because they were too dumb to know anything about World War II and too complacent in their supposed knowledge to bother Googling the information about the plane’s name before assuming that it had a deadly homosexual aura. As if American soldiers in the 1940s were Out and Proud!
At the end of our email chat, my friend wrote this: “Next thing you know they’ll be removing the Native American from the Iwo Jima statue.”
I knew the statue, of course. My dad fought in the Pacific and I think everyone of my generation knows that sculpture and what it means. But I had had no idea that one of the soldiers was a Native American—Marine Private Ira Hayes, of Arizona, who selflessly volunteered and fought bravely in the Pacific in general and the Iwo Jima campaign in particular. Hayes was well known after the war. My friend told me about the movie released in 1961, “The Outsider,” that was made about his life, with Tony Curtis (of all people!) in the starring role. And we LOL’d about the idea that anyone, ever, could tarnish this brave young man’s reputation simply because he was a Native American.
You know...not white.
But today, as reported in WaPo and elsewhere, that is exactly what happened. In line with the proud statement of purported alcoholic, wife abuser, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that “DEI is dead at the Defense Department,” all mention of Ira Hayes and his participation in the Iwo Jima campaign and bronze presence in that iconic statue has been removed from the DOD Web site. How the hell does someone who volunteered to serve count as “DEI?” All mention of the Navajo code talkers—who made a critical contribution to the defeat of fascism in WWII by creating signal codes in their own language—is also gone. Remind me: Isn’t this the gang of morons who are always screaming about “cancel culture?” It’s beyond shameful. It’s almost impossible to believe that we are living through this kind of crap.
